IN THE ARENA

Southland Times, Issue 21193, 20 September 1930, Page 13

IN THE ARENA

WHERE ARE THEY?

(By 65144.)

Many a boy has admired the writings of Charles Kingsley and has gone out into the sunlit west to adventures with his heroes of “Westward Ho 1” and the words of one of those heroes might readily be applied to the present day. The lean and gaunt Salvation Yeo, when he returned from the Spanish Main as the only survivor of unlucky John Oxenham’s ill-fated expedition, spoke to Sir Richard Grenville of his comrades and said, “Where are they now? Gone like the spray.” ■ i Twelve short years ago several millions of soldiers were camped in Europe. They w’ere spread all around the boundaries of the central powers and had overflowed into the countries beyond, in camps, in hospitals, and in the line. And now like the comrades of Salvation Yeo they are gone like the spray. Taken singly the average soldier is simple enough. He heard the call of war and sprang to answer it. He appeared from the shop, the farm and the college and was gathered into the mighty army. Once he entered the army he became a unit and his origin no longer mattered and an astonished observer might have been forgiven for saying, “Where did he come from?” When the war was over the soldiers vanished back into the ranks of peace, and they vanished in more ways than one. New Zealand produced an army of 100,000 men and received all but 16,000 back again, but where are they now? You can go out into the streets of any city or out into the open stretches of the country and you will not see them. A walk through the miles of streets in any of the cities of this Dominion will show no one who might or might not be a soldier. They are gone although they' are still with us. They marched in the army as a division and as such they shook the world with their deeds, but they disintegrated and vanished and ceased to be a matter of wonder. A famous artist once set to work on a canvas and produced a picture and it was a masterpiece. His subject was what I have written. He realized that the soldiers of the war had vanished and he sat down to think of where they had gone and he found them and painted them into his picture, which he named “Marching On.” When he looked for the soldiers who had vanished he saw the battlefield where they had fought and suffered and he discovered that it was only divided from the fields of peace by the bridge of remembrance. The soldiers finished their work on the battlefield and marched from it, back into the. fields of peace. They passed under the arch on the bridge of remembrance and threw away their dress and accoutrements of war, but they kept marching on. They took on the garb of the farmer and artisan, the clerk and the scholar, the docter and the lawyer, but they kept marching on. They had fought together on the battlefield, held together by something older than civilization; the love for home, and when they returned to the fields and paths of peace they carried on the fight, still in serried ranks with officers, non-com-missioned officers and men, but they were not held together by discipline, even if they were still actuated by the same spirit; the love of their homes.

They have gone but are still with us. Their fight ended only to begin again. They have laid aside their weapons to take up others and they are fighting just as grimly as they fought on the battlefields of Europe. Every company that marched on board ship in a New Zealand port and sailed away to fight for the Empire contained a large percentage of men who were determined to do whatever could be done for the homes they were leaving behind, and every company contained a small percentage of men who had no desire to do anything except to crawl into a funk hole at the first opportunity and let the battle pass on over them.

The position has not changed. Those men who vanished into the fields and paths of peace supplied a large percentage of workers who were determined to do all they could do for the homes they had fought for and returned to, and at the same time supplied a small percentage of men who were prepared to do nothing except to crawl into the first available funk hole and stay there while the battle of life passed over them.

They have vanished and it is all too easy for the rank and file to believe that they are lost and with them their dash and glory, but it is not so. The majority of the men who were scattered around Europe twelve years ago are scattered throughout their home lands to-day, and they are fighting and doing just as much for their homes as they did on the other side of the bridge. There were always soldiers who would cry out that the position was lost before it was half attacked and the same applies to the battle of life. , Politicians, who should know better, grow panicky and shake their followers with cries of disaster, and the panic spreads through the rank and. file and very often causes a temporary withdrawal, but the old spirit which carried the men over the top again is bound to assert itself and carry the army of peace forward again, because the men who vanished are still in our midst and they are marching on.